The Wrong Way to Thank Employees

No worker has ever received an engraved plaque that read “Thanks for keeping your seat warm for 10 years.”

Yet that is the message employers send with awards for employees’ five, ten or 20-year anniversaries, according to human resources and recognition experts. They say that most recognition programs reward the wrong things.

Anniversary awards – from medals to gift certificates redeemed via a catalog of jewelry and household appliances – have little to no impact on whether employees feel good about their company, says Eric Mosley, chief executive of Globoforce, a company that designs employee-recognition programs for companies.

Even so, 59% of employers are offering tenure-based awards this year, a figure that has ranged between 54% and 62% since 2011, according to the Society for Human Resource Management.